THE GREAT MYTH

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

“He who would do good to others must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, the hypocrite, and the flatterer. For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organised Particulars and not generalising Demonstrations of Rational Power.”- William Blake

Thanks to modern technology and the moral courage of the Canadian professor, Jordan B. Peterson, who, armed with a clear understanding of the psychological warfare being waged upon the western world, has brought it all to an interested public’s attention.

There were those who well understood just what was happening to the Western world even in the 1940s as the following article clearly shows. But it took the right timing along with the right tools to spread the message farther and wider.

The Social Crediter, 20 February, 1943:The Great Myth by N.F.W. Review of the book “The Rape of the Masses” by Serge Chakotin, first published in Paris in 1939.

“Douglas has suggested in The Big Idea (VI) that Socialism is the cult of the Group-soul, implying inevitably that subordination of the higher to the lower, and of variety to standardisation. In which case Socialism, or Dialectical Materialism, to give it its philosophical title, is just the forcible assertion of that subordination by means of propaganda. Now propaganda is simply the instrument of Experimental or Objective Psychology; the application of a few observed facts of the physics of the human body to human beings regarded as an aggregate, i.e., in the mass.

This technique is what is known as Social Science [i.e., Engineering…ed] but it would be a closer definition, I think, to call it Social Physics – the knowledge of [human] masses. What it boils down to is the application of Newtonian mathematics to abstract mass-humanity, accepting the idea of “absolute mass” [the abstract thing in itself] as a working hypothesis. No one looking round the world of mechanics today can deny that the Newtonian hypothesis, as applied to what the nineteenth century biologists called “non-living matter", has worked; that is, produced results - so far of rather a disastrous kind. And now, according to bio-chemistry and on the formulae of Professor Pavlov, we are to see (or rather, are seeing) what it can do applied to what the Victorian biologists actually named “living matter”. That is, as soon as the human individual can be collectivised and reduced to a common denominator - in short manoeuvred into such a situation and so “conditioned" that he can be mathematically dealt with in the physical mass.

But the truth about Newtonian physics is that it is a method, a technique, but not an objective; a method of relative (related) facts, but not the truth. Einstein demonstrated its inexactitude by introducing as an additional factor into his mathematical calculations, the Observer - - yours truly, who is, of course, the crux of the whole matter. Without the Observer (individual consciousness), there can be no objective, and therefore no policy--really; there can be “no nothing,” which was Bishop Berkeley’s contention. The assertion of the Dialectical Materialist of the predominance of conscious (living) matter or human physics implies a denial of meta-physics, which is in reality just the “little something more” that in combination with physics constitutes what we know of living reality.

Mr. Chakotin is in no doubt as to the modern origin of Experimental Psychology, which he dates from “the rise of Rationalism, a movement which continued to the French Revolution, when there was a true explosion of agitation and propaganda”- the spark which, as he says, “at a distance of more than a hundred years lit the great flame of the Russian Revolution". And he quotes Lenin’s advice to “young militants to rediscover the bold spirit of the Encyclopaedists.” “All eyes are fixed on France,” he writes (the book was first published in Paris in 1939), “the champion of Liberty a century and a half ago, the champion of human progress for decades past and in these critical times the solid buckler of the humanitarian idea. It is often hinted that she is not united. What an error!” Have the searing events of 1940 and since had no modifying effect on Mr. Chakotin’s outlook, one wonders? Or that of Mr. H.G. Wells, to whom his book is dedicated.

Crowds are abstractions. Aggregation has a definite bio-chemical effect on individuals, so that collectively their behaviour bears little resemblance to their individual behaviour. By and large, the tendency is for individuals to be realists, and not amenable to abstract symbols such, for instance, as Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The exact reverse is true of crowds who can be more easily led by the appeal of symbols than by the realities for which they are supposed to stand, and who, the more they are denied the reality, clamour for the symbol. This is how Mr. Chakotin with his interests concentrated exclusively on humanity in the bulk, puts it:

“If men are pursuing an aim, the reason is that they are not content with things as they are; they are in search for something more attractive, and if this is unattainable they create a myth. . . . The myth belongs to the collective, it justifies, maintains, inspires the existence of the community, be it people, a profession, at a secret society”.

“The important thing,” he says elsewhere in his book in regard to the specific aims of Socialism, “is to find for the doctrine the equivalent of a mysticism - a myth and suggested expression, rites, symbols, slogans. . . The myth for our emotional programme exists, and is entirely in conformity with the democratic doctrine. This is the wonderful myth of human Liberty, of the French Revolution. . . ” (my italics)

Translated into terms of Socialist propaganda it becomes “. . . the constant innoculation of the community in all its members, by means of propagandist practice. . . of the ideas of the true, the good, the beautiful, and of faith in human progress, and in its true instrument the principle of social duty.” (my italics.) In short, the recommendation to society at large of certain abstract courses, by salaried individuals who themselves have no faith (biological conviction) in their validity or ultimate usefulness. The parallel here with official religion, on its admittedly worse side, is so obvious as to be unavoidable.

In action, this becomes in the language of Experimental Psychology, “Eubiotics, the improvement of the conditions of existence - a sufficient wage, guaranteed rest, the removal of family or industrial anxieties - in a word, the assurance of all the features of a rational and hygienic existence.” And, one might surely add, the quite impossible aim of extracting from the environment of the human organism of every element by and which it can alone express its conscious existence - that is, live.

This is the state of nihilism, the cult of Nothingness - apathy, “what’s the good of anything?” In short, it is Dialectical Materialism brought to its logical conclusion. And so after all the apparent fire, and passion, and enthusiasm of Mr. Chakotin’s book, it ends like a dim scam: from a Russian novel of the last century; in despairing ennui of a provincial drawing-room...

...It was another investigator of biological truth, and of the possibility of realising abundance, who asked, “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” Or, it might be added, succeed in lining warm nests with Blue Birds’ feathers? But then the Founder of Christianity placed no reliance on propaganda, or myths - even the myth of Liberty. He approached the problem in the right and only way, from the point of view of the individual soul and not of the “group” soul. What he said was, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” First things first in short.

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